Self-Organization

Farewell to Competitiveness – Why Companies need a New Operating System

This post is just a little off-topic, but really just a little. Marc Stoffel is the CEO of Haufe-umantis, a Swiss software company. What make him special is the fact that he´s an elected CEO.

Haufe-umantis is special in many ways. Among the peculiarities is the fact that all leaders within the company are chosen by a democratic election – up to the position of CEO. I´ve had the chance to meet Marc on a couple of occasions. He´s a great guy and holds very intriguing conceptions of leadership, organization design, and engagement. One of his quotes still rings in my ears very clearly:

Employees choose their leaders each and every day – whether they are allowed to or not.

With ordinary People to extraordinary Returns

Nico Rose - Handelsblatt Jahrestagung Private EquityA couple of weeks ago, I was invited to give a dinner speech at a private equity convention that was hosted by Handelsblatt, one of the most eminent (business) newspapers in Germany. I was a little surprised since – to be honest – I don’t know sh.t about private equity, mergers & acquisitions, etc.

So instead, I decided to talk about some subjects I do know, e.g., Positive Psychology, Self-Determination, and alternative forms of leadership.

Subsequent to my talk, I was invited to put into writing what I said that evening. The result is a feature that spans topics such as burnout, employee engagement, managing organizational energy, and the theory of the Kondratieff waves. My tagline was:

Extraordinary returns will be realized where ordinary people are empowered to achieve extraordinary results.

An English version of the piece is available available here. Enjoy!

Nico_Rose_FYB